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Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

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Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#81

Post by dmurray »

phonebucket wrote: post #75
vbezhenar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything including god. So you can claim copyright for everything.

> You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything... Not to get too far off topic, but even an infinitely long byte sequence cannot represent all numbers. It's possible to construct something not representable by that sequence via Cantor's diagonal argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diag…

It doesn't contain the floating point representation of that number, which would be infinitely long, but it does contain the UTF8-encoded constructive proof that uniquely identifies that number.

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#82

Post by pishpash »

jcelerier wrote: post #76
pishpash wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, there is a gradation and you've not answered the question. What is the intent if a human provided 1 bit of input by flipping a coin and chose all the odd numbered melodies? What if a human provided 1 bit of input by flipping an unobservable mental coin? What about 2 bits? N bits? What if a machine generated all the "interesting" melodies via a neural network?

These questions are why we have jurors and don't just do justice decisions following straight algorithms

What is the basis by which jury likely decides intent here? Is it any different than "arbitrarily"?

The point is in a world of cheap computing, intellectual property is probably moot if its cost of production is nearly zero.

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#83

Post by albertzeyer »

tunesmith wrote: post #42

It's about fourteen kinds of ridiculous, as summarized in other threads. No rhythms, no meter, no tempo, melodies are longer than 12 notes, it's diatonic, single octave, no concept of underlying harmony, the headline is literally false, etc. Some of the copyright lawsuits are dumb and this is effective satire or performance art but that's all it is.

The code actually can produce every possible melody in MIDI. They simply have not stored every possible melody explicitly (uncompressed) on a hard drive (which is impossible, as the size is infinity).

However, if you interpret the program itself as a self-extracting compressed archive, they actually have stored every possible melody (in a compressed way).

So the question reduces to how much the type of compression matters here (is ZIP allowed? is TAR allowed? what about more sophisticated like PAQ? and what about this Rust code?). This is what I/we discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22441328

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#85

Post by Anderkent »

dmurray wrote: post #81
phonebucket wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything... Not to get too far off topic, but even an infinitely long byte sequence cannot represent all numbers. It's possible to construct something not representable by that sequence via Cantor's diagonal argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diag…

It doesn't contain the floating point representation of that number, which would be infinitely long, but it does contain the UTF8-encoded constructive proof that uniquely identifies that number.

Surely not? If there are more numbers that can be represented in any amount of bytes (as shown by the diagonal argument), then you cannot represent a constructive proof for each of them in any amount of bytes.

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#88

Post by reacweb »

Chinjut wrote: post #63
reacweb wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Takes any algorithm that can generates the digits of pi. It is proven that all the sequences of digits are present somewhere in these digits. Can you claim copyright on all the books of the universe because you can show the algorithm that can generate every possible books ?

"It is proven that all the sequences of digits are present somewhere in these digits" This has never been proven for the digits of π. Of course, there are other digit-sequences for which it is trivially true. For example, just concatenating together every finite sequence of digits, in some suitable order.

I stand corrected. For pi, it is only a conjecture. My point remains true for "Champernowne sequence".

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#89

Post by TeMPOraL »

pishpash wrote: post #82
jcelerier wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These questions are why we have jurors and don't just do justice decisions following straight algorithms

What is the basis by which jury likely decides intent here? Is it any different than "arbitrarily"? The point is in a world of cheap computing, intellectual property is probably moot if its cost of production is nearly zero.

The point is, you should read the article.

IP is not moot because you have a random number generator. IP may become less relevant if computers ever learn to select useful bit patterns out of sea of randomness, but even then, the legal system will handle it just fine (somebody will own the selection algorithms after all).

> What is the basis by which jury likely decides intent here? Is it any different than "arbitrarily"?

Causality. You can't determine intent from bits, which leads people to (mistakenly) believe colour doesn't exist. To determine the colour of the bits, the courts will look at the actual chain of events surrounding their creation. Because that is what matters. Not what the bits are, but how you came into possession of them, and why.

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#90

Post by Filligree »

Anderkent wrote: post #85
dmurray wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't contain the floating point representation of that number, which would be infinitely long, but it does contain the UTF8-encoded constructive proof that uniquely identifies that number.

Surely not? If there are more numbers that can be represented in any amount of bytes (as shown by the diagonal argument), then you cannot represent a constructive proof for each of them in any amount of bytes.

The argument still applies, yes. Nevertheless the string still contains all finite substrings, which includes all English sentences describing such numbers.

The implication is that human minds wouldn't be able to represent it either, at least not with language.

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